True, but here's a younger Tod Frye (the original Atari Pac-Man programmer) talking about how and why his version came out the way it did: ruclips.net/video/UTDUB_GiTKA/видео.html
Impossible at the time, or at least extremely difficult. Memory was an EXTREME constraint which this version makes plenty of use of, and we have modern tools as well, which simply didn't exist then. Working with OLD systems is trivial today, because the tools at my disposal are incredible in comparison to what we had 40 years ago. There were versions of PacMan on the C=64 that were comparable to the arcade. It had 64 KB to work with. The Atari 2600 was all ROM memory and 128 BYTES of memory. Doing a port this well in the 1980s on an Atari 2600, would be challenging to say the least.
@@weon_penca Yeah, the memory cost made it prohibitive. People don't understand return on investment and if I explain it in detail here, I guarantee RUclips would just delete the comment. I hate this site.
In defense of Todd Frye ( designer of Atari 2600 Pac-Man) The version that was released on the console was a prototype. It was never meant for the public to see.
@@yaphettbanks4936 Todd Frye didn't understand what made games great and challenging. To him, making a game with a guy eating dots in a maze with ghosts chasing him would make the game "the same." When people complained about the warp tunnels being at the tip and bottom instead of on the sides, he said something along the lines of "I don't understand what you're complaining about. The game is the same. It has a maze with ghosts in it."
If this appeared on my Atari 2600 screen as a kid instead of that Abomination we got i would have been utterly Stunned, Shocked from Amazement, Lost all bodily functions, and died from cardiac arrest. 30 some years later and that almost happened to me when i watched this video, i cannot express how Wonderful and Awesome this looks.
There is a 4k version that is spot on as well. But the Pac*Man that came out back in 1981 wasn't nearly as bad as it was portrayed. The main problem is that it didn't look like the arcade version. But if you don't compare it to the arcade version, it's not that bad. I do wish he would have created a MUCH better sprite multiplexer so that all 4 monsters weren't flickering at the same time. That is actually where the term ghosts comes from. On the arcade machine, it had the word monsters in the little instruction area of the cabinet.
Goes to show how much hidden power was available in the 2600 if the executives weren’t cheap bastards stuck on the cheaper 4K ROM...AAA game of the time and they compromised ROM size to save a few shekels. The sound effects of this version...amazing! There would have been NO disappointment if it looked and sounded like this Christmas morning. We would have been blown away....exactly as you said.
@@gavincurtis Jumping to an 8K ROM was not trivial back then. Not sure what ROM chips cost back then, but back in 1978 a 4K RAM chip was about $70 and an 8K RAM chip was about $250.
All Access Gaming if it was than... god who knows it probably would be the most loved version ever, and probably would be considered ataris best game even over pitfall 2.
NO. The Atari ST was on the same level as the Amiga, Mac, and Acorn Archimedes, but they rested on their laurels. Atari died because of stagnation. The ST could have been a contender, but they left out a ton of stuff, like the ability to do side scrolling. You might want to see what Giana Sisters looked on the platform compared to even the lowly C=64.
@@fuzzywzhe Ehhh… it wasn't on the same level as the Archimedes. Not in technical terms. Not even close. The 32-bit RISC processor in the Arc laid the foundations of what's in every smartphone on the planet right now.
@@maddogUK69 Nah, it was on the same level at that time. RISC isn't all that. It was a HUGE argument in the 1990s of RISC over CISC. It was just marketing hype. Your x86 processor is actually RISC with a shell around it in microcode simulating instructions for older CISC instructions, but you don't have direct access to the "real" assembly. I never have had an Acorn Archemdies, but I've simulated it. From what I've seen of it, it was comparable to the Amiga and Atari ST of the day. POSSIBLY slightly better. The reason it's in such widespread use today, is lower power consumption. ARM is also much smaller in gate requirements, 64 core processors existed 10 years ago. I expect x86 to die in time in favor of it. Now that Apple has adopted ARM, finally a large, evil corporation has adopted it, I'm sure it will become a major player.
@@fuzzywzhe Disagree. I'm aware of the RISC/CISC points you make re. Intel silicon, but that doesn't negate my point. I _did_ have an Archimedes, and the ARM was a superior processor to the 16-bit 68Ks in both the Amiga and the ST. The Amiga as a _platform_ wins out because of all the custom ICs, no argument, but to dismiss RISC as "marketing hype" is an absurd thing to say. Plus, lower power consumption is only half the story. It's about power per watt. And Intel chips _still_ don't allow for Windows hardware with mobile performance like a MacBook Pro. They just don't. To argue otherwise is to expose bias or ignorance.
@@maddogUK69 I am not "dismissing" the ARM, it was a good intevention, however it had an ideal, and I do not believe in ideals. I expect something LIKE the ARM to become predomenate. You may not fully appreciate where we are. Processors don't matter. I could be writing this on a machine with 1/10th th processing power, and I wouldn't notiice. This crappy laoptop I'm typing on, is fully capable of nuclear weapons simulation, it would have been a breach of US security to export this to Iran 20 years ago. I bought it for $100. So few people know where we are. You are personally able to own the Library of Alexandra, but you don't. I'm, not like you, I have that library. I stand on the shoulders of giants. You don't even appreciate the mountains of intellect, do you - so you will never climb them. An architecture for a computing system. Trivial arguments. Who really cares?
Absolutely mind blowing, even the designers behind the atari 2600 NEVER intended to allow 8K games because the internal rom inside is 4K ,BTW they even tout that no one would ever use bigger rom games then 4K since memory was soooo damm expensive in 1977,but thanks bankswitching,bigger rom games are possible,so if you tout to throw your atari 260 away with the reason that it could not do bigger & better games,well think again because this version proves that with such kind of graphics,sound and decent gameplay all become possible on this old machine,so you better off saving your atari 2600 from the trash,dust it off to play this ultimate version of,,,, pac man!!!!
The original console designers chose a standard off-the-shelf 24-pin cartridge slot to save money. This was a travesty. They didn't set aside enough pins to map all available memory. Fortunately, the MOS chip has a way to multiplex memory pages by using two multi-purpose pins. Without this, there would be no 8K or higher carts. This eats up some clock cycles and adds complexity, but is otherwise a clever way to map memory when pins are scarce. With only 24 pins available, another useful function that was dropped was the hardware interrupt pin. This could have been used to get even more functionality. Remember, this was the same chip used in the Apple 2e. There was no reason they couldn't get at least the same amount of performance out of their games. They just went the cheap route and reduced functionality to same a few pennies here and there. Where they screwed the pooch was with the archaic graphics (or lack of) processing. Basically, you had to code (using the measly 4K) a graphics driver in every game. A good 80% of your code is spent just drawing stuff on the screen. All of engineering is a trade-off between functionality and money. The designers went for short-term profit instead of thinking ahead and making something that would knock our 1970's socks off. This was probably necessary because there was no guarantee video games would be popular and they had to make a business case to their backers. A shame really.
@@stabgod the 2600s hardware design makes more sense when you realize that it was only ever designed to be a souped up/cost reduced pong console, and all of the other things it managed to so were as a result of exploiting hardware bugs.
John Rickard - yes I agree that they went the cheap route, but wouldn’t say the way coders manipulated memory was a bug. It’s a built-in feature on the MOS chip to multiplex memory pages. Not a bug at all, it was one of those features you get that doesn’t seem to have much use, but happens to be quite powerful in the right circumstances. Again, had they chosen a cartridge slot with just one more pin, they wouldn’t have needed to use the paging feature. Two more would have unlocked all available 32kb memory. For that matter, another pin for interrupts would have been a huge addition. We’re talking just adding pins to the cartridge slot. The cpu already had the requisite capabilities, just not enough pins to access all features. So they chose to gimp the system in order to save a few pennies per unit.
This version of Pac-Man looks absolutely amazing. It sure beats the original Atari 2600 version. But the original Atari 2600 Ms. Pac-Man was pretty darn good also and came out just one year later. Atari did finally figure out how to get the most out of the 2600, but it took a big mistake for them to figure it out.
@@customsongmaker What he meant is that they should've took time making the game and made it to somsthing like this. Please have some reading comprehension.
It's always neat to see the potential of a system, but unfortunately it's not always able to be tapped into at the time due to time constraints and hardware.
If only Atari had programmers as talented as the maker of this when pacman 2600 was created. I know pacman sold well but, as a former kid at the time, I can say it was quite the letdown vs. the arcade. This version rocks! I would have been super excited to have this at home back in the day.
+rmu2867 Two things... One: If you read the new Atari book (Business is Fun), you'll find that the programmer (Todd Frye), wanted to use a cart with more than 4K, but management nixed it. Two:. It's easy with hindsight to say, 'Aw hell, they could have done this 30 years ago'. Yeah. Technically, they could have. But what you are looking now at is the combined knowledge of over 30 years of jumping through hoops to do ANYTHING on the 2600. Remember: This thing was designed to do Pong games, and not much more than that. If the owner of Atari had his way, the 2600 would have been phased out for a newer, better machine by 1980, because it was believed that the 2600 couldn't do much more than Tank and Breakout. Thanks to the genius of Jay Miner (the graphics designer), they got a hell of a lot more than that out of it! Even Jay was later quoted as being shocked by what the programmers were able to do with such limited hardware. Today, you have combined experience (and code samples), demonstrating the tricks of thousands of programmers, using machines to code with that they could only DREAM of way back when. You can try something, and if it doesn't work, it's a quick flip back from the monitor to try something else. You have tools to help you with the critical scanline timing, art tools to help you draw detailed characters, and bankselecting to let you use up to 16K. Back then, you had none of this, AND they had to key everything in by hand (or have someone else do it) - then do it all again for the most minor of changes. The tools and knowledge base are light-years ahead of what they had in 1981, where only mainframes were a bit faster than the 2600 itself.
His Honer, Special Council Covfefe Chocker it’s very fashionable to “blame management” but there’s also the reality of a) the cost of cartridges then b) the retail limits around taking in inventory in time for Christmas and c) the reality of fads being notoriously short lived.
This version uses an 8k cartridge with bank-switched memory... compared to the 4k cartridge with just the Atari's 128 bytes of memory that the 1981 Atari Pac Man used. That was a corporate decision, if the programmer could have used the then-new 8k cartridge, the game would have looked a lot better.
I always knew the 2600 had so much more potential. The problem with game developers back then , is that they had tight deadlines and had to rush games into production (just look at the original 2600 Pacman.....it was a joke)...but had to be out by Christmas 1981. Third party developers actually made some half decent games for 2600, as they had more time and thought to put into them. This video is a perfect example of what some of the games could have been back then .
Definitely shouldn't have cut corners with that game when they released it in 1982. The Atari 2600 is a powerful machine, just needs some work to unlock it's true potential.
It is not powerful at all. It can only display 2 moving things at a time. In Pitfall, the trees in the background are made of the same sprite as the player's body, because the Atari was too weak to allow separate background images.
@@customsongmaker Still, for a console that was originally considered to be not much more than a home version of pong, it can do a lot more than that. I wasn't saying it was powerful in the sense it was like an NES or anything, I was simply saying that it's underestimated.
I love the Atari 2600 port of Pacman for what it is. But this is amazing. It is as accurate to the original arcade game as you can get on the Atari 2600.
This is amazing. If Atari had released this game instead, they wouldn't have had to fill a landfill with unsold Pac-Man carts. They should have sprung for the 8K memory.
This version of Pac Man is no longer on AtariAge's website...I would love to see what Champ Games could do with a Pac Man port. Their Galaga and Wizard of Wor ports are 2nd to none on the console.
If this is what we saw when Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 first came out we would have been amazed instead of disappointed. This looks great! This would have sold brand new Atari 2600 consoles just so people could play it. Thanks for the video, good stuff! 👍 👍
The 2600 could do some amazing stuff if the executives weren’t so cheap and this’s would have blown the minds of 2600 users. Should of given the developers the 8K ROM as they wanted. Bit them in the ass forcing the 4K ROM. Probably going to repeat now with a number of the bad AAA games spewing out the diarrhea hole now. History repeats itself when forgotten.
holy crap this game measures up to the Atari 5200 version of Pac man! If Atari had released this in 1982 instead of normal Pac man the video game crash of 1983 might not have even happened.
Amazingly done, but at the higher levels, there’s a LOT of flickering, sometimes to the extent that Pac-Man or the monsters become invisible for a few seconds. And the fact that the box behavior is never replicated on non-arcade editions of the game, no matter which iteration it is, is definitely forgivable, considering how little you have to work with on an over-40-year-old console. Mind-blowing-and FUN! Peace.
This is impressive for an Atari 2600 cart. Too bad the version we got was a real rush job. I think they gave the team a few weeks to meet the Christmas rush.
Perfect example of what could've been. Had THIS version come out on the 2600 in 1981, I think the 2600 wouldn't have suffered from a ton of horrible rushed games.
The did have a version of Pac Man back in the day for the 2600 but it was very much inferior to this new version. The main reasons it's so much better is because newer programming techniques are used, there is better understanding of the hardware of the 2600 now then they did back then.
This is what proper programming looks like and what IS actually possible on the 2600. Is this using the 2600’s sound generator or the chip in on the cart like Commando or Ballblazer?
Here's Tod Frye, the creator of the original Atari 2600 Pac-Man, being impressed with this homebrew version: ruclips.net/video/RqezF_Lv05Y/видео.html and here's a much younger Tod Frye (from 1997, on the 20th anniversary of the release of the 2600 in an excellent documentary series called "Stella at 20") explaining WHY his looks the way it does (and he admits that a lot of it was because of laziness): ruclips.net/video/UTDUB_GiTKA/видео.html
Actually, that's a rule in the arcade Pac-Man as well. It's known colloquially as "Cruise Elroy", where Blinky starts going noticeably faster once a certain (low) amount of dots are on-screen. If you look up "The Pac-Man Dossier", it has a great writeup on this and other mechanics.
Well shut my mouth! I did not know this!! Thanks for the lesson! Will you be making a cart for it? I know the 4k is out but I would SOOO rather have this as a cart!!!
I'm merely a Pac-Man enthusiast, I have no access to nor skills to make a cart of this on my own. I'd recommend searching for the ROM and using a Harmony cart, but other than that, I'm not sure.
I'm sure that many coding techniques and hardware secrets were not known to the developers at the time, so this is mostly possible thanks to more powerful, modern compilers and extensive knowledge.
dlancer2k Yeah, but even then, there's an earlier 4K ROM homebrew that's basically this, but without the power pellet sound, the title, and pitched sound, as well as always flickering graphics (though nowhere near as bad as the original)
Yes, imagine what could have happened if they sprang for the extra 4k .. strangely enough i still smile when i hear the original 2600 version start up .. bee, beep boo, bonk ... gronk, gronk, gronk .. I mean, you to use a lot of imagination to interpret 2600 games anyway.
A K is a kilobyte. A kilobyte is 1024 bytes. In other words, the entire game takes up roughly the same memory as a text file that contains 8,192 letters of text. In other words, this program is EXTREMELY tiny, especially by today's standards.
The 4K version is cool looking BUT frustrating BECAUSE it starts off TOO FAST...also the flickering of the ghosts makes them hard to see(playing game on the flashback portable). This version looks to have almost an EXACT feel of arcade Pac-Man at least at the beginning plus FAR LESS flickering of the ghosts.
Chris - Thanks Chris. I wasn’t sure if the 2600 would be able to handle a ROM larger than 4k but if the size issue was more a cart thing then great! How amazing would it have been to have this as the official release back in 1982!
@@Sprogster No, I'm pretty sure it's the lack of quality across the entire Atari 2600 library. There's too many games for me to name the redeeming factors of the American console market crash of 83.
Just to think that the original release for the 2600 could have looked like this if Atari would have taken the time and effort into putting out a better product. I hated the original 2600 version since I was a kid. I would have been so happy with one that looked like this back in the day.
IMPRESSIVE! This is what Pac-Man on Atari 2600 from 1982 should've been like!
True, but here's a younger Tod Frye (the original Atari Pac-Man programmer) talking about how and why his version came out the way it did: ruclips.net/video/UTDUB_GiTKA/видео.html
Impossible at the time, or at least extremely difficult. Memory was an EXTREME constraint which this version makes plenty of use of, and we have modern tools as well, which simply didn't exist then.
Working with OLD systems is trivial today, because the tools at my disposal are incredible in comparison to what we had 40 years ago.
There were versions of PacMan on the C=64 that were comparable to the arcade. It had 64 KB to work with. The Atari 2600 was all ROM memory and 128 BYTES of memory. Doing a port this well in the 1980s on an Atari 2600, would be challenging to say the least.
@@fuzzywzhe I was thinking the same, this is awesome but in that time probably a game with 8k like this would have been just too expensive
@@weon_penca Yeah, the memory cost made it prohibitive. People don't understand return on investment and if I explain it in detail here, I guarantee RUclips would just delete the comment. I hate this site.
@@weon_penca He did a 4k version too, it's almost as good. It proves that Atari could have done a great Pac-Man for the 2600.
This, boys and girls, is what effort looks like.
...plus 34 years instead of six weeks helps a bit, no?
koolkitty8989 half hearted is not the right description. Rushed very much is ...
In defense of Todd Frye ( designer of Atari 2600 Pac-Man)
The version that was released on the console was a prototype. It was never meant for the public to see.
@@yaphettbanks4936 Todd Frye didn't understand what made games great and challenging. To him, making a game with a guy eating dots in a maze with ghosts chasing him would make the game "the same." When people complained about the warp tunnels being at the tip and bottom instead of on the sides, he said something along the lines of "I don't understand what you're complaining about. The game is the same. It has a maze with ghosts in it."
@@curtthegamer934
That's hilarious.......and sad at the same time.
Extremely impressive. I love that we've advanced to the point where we push older consoles even further than we thought we could.
actually it WOULDVE looked like this 40 years ago if the devs werent rushed to conplete it asap
If this appeared on my Atari 2600 screen as a kid instead of that Abomination we got i would have been utterly Stunned, Shocked from Amazement, Lost all bodily functions, and died from cardiac arrest. 30 some years later and that almost happened to me when i watched this video, i cannot express how Wonderful and Awesome this looks.
+Imax Junior Are you taking the piss?
There is a 4k version that is spot on as well. But the Pac*Man that came out back in 1981 wasn't nearly as bad as it was portrayed. The main problem is that it didn't look like the arcade version. But if you don't compare it to the arcade version, it's not that bad. I do wish he would have created a MUCH better sprite multiplexer so that all 4 monsters weren't flickering at the same time. That is actually where the term ghosts comes from. On the arcade machine, it had the word monsters in the little instruction area of the cabinet.
Very well said. Christmas ‘81 was the disappointment of a lifetime. This would’ve been wonderful though...
Goes to show how much hidden power was available in the 2600 if the executives weren’t cheap bastards stuck on the cheaper 4K ROM...AAA game of the time and they compromised ROM size to save a few shekels. The sound effects of this version...amazing! There would have been NO disappointment if it looked and sounded like this Christmas morning. We would have been blown away....exactly as you said.
@@gavincurtis Jumping to an 8K ROM was not trivial back then. Not sure what ROM chips cost back then, but back in 1978 a 4K RAM chip was about $70 and an 8K RAM chip was about $250.
Imagine if this is the version that was released for the Atari 2600 back in 1982.
All Access Gaming if it was than... god who knows it probably would be the most loved version ever, and probably would be considered ataris best game even over pitfall 2.
Perhaps the Video Game Crash wouldn't have affected Atari to the point if bankruptcy.
All Access Gaming More like during Christmas in 1982.
Sales would have gone through the roof.
And the skills used in doing this would have translated into other games of the time being better, as good as the late 80s stragglers that were made.
Had Atari done this back in 1982, they might still be king till this day.
NO. The Atari ST was on the same level as the Amiga, Mac, and Acorn Archimedes, but they rested on their laurels. Atari died because of stagnation. The ST could have been a contender, but they left out a ton of stuff, like the ability to do side scrolling. You might want to see what Giana Sisters looked on the platform compared to even the lowly C=64.
@@fuzzywzhe Ehhh… it wasn't on the same level as the Archimedes. Not in technical terms. Not even close. The 32-bit RISC processor in the Arc laid the foundations of what's in every smartphone on the planet right now.
@@maddogUK69 Nah, it was on the same level at that time. RISC isn't all that. It was a HUGE argument in the 1990s of RISC over CISC. It was just marketing hype. Your x86 processor is actually RISC with a shell around it in microcode simulating instructions for older CISC instructions, but you don't have direct access to the "real" assembly.
I never have had an Acorn Archemdies, but I've simulated it. From what I've seen of it, it was comparable to the Amiga and Atari ST of the day. POSSIBLY slightly better. The reason it's in such widespread use today, is lower power consumption. ARM is also much smaller in gate requirements, 64 core processors existed 10 years ago. I expect x86 to die in time in favor of it. Now that Apple has adopted ARM, finally a large, evil corporation has adopted it, I'm sure it will become a major player.
@@fuzzywzhe Disagree. I'm aware of the RISC/CISC points you make re. Intel silicon, but that doesn't negate my point. I _did_ have an Archimedes, and the ARM was a superior processor to the 16-bit 68Ks in both the Amiga and the ST. The Amiga as a _platform_ wins out because of all the custom ICs, no argument, but to dismiss RISC as "marketing hype" is an absurd thing to say. Plus, lower power consumption is only half the story. It's about power per watt. And Intel chips _still_ don't allow for Windows hardware with mobile performance like a MacBook Pro. They just don't. To argue otherwise is to expose bias or ignorance.
@@maddogUK69 I am not "dismissing" the ARM, it was a good intevention, however it had an ideal, and I do not believe in ideals. I expect something LIKE the ARM to become predomenate.
You may not fully appreciate where we are. Processors don't matter. I could be writing this on a machine with 1/10th th processing power, and I wouldn't notiice. This crappy laoptop I'm typing on, is fully capable of nuclear weapons simulation, it would have been a breach of US security to export this to Iran 20 years ago. I bought it for $100.
So few people know where we are. You are personally able to own the Library of Alexandra, but you don't. I'm, not like you, I have that library. I stand on the shoulders of giants. You don't even appreciate the mountains of intellect, do you - so you will never climb them.
An architecture for a computing system. Trivial arguments. Who really cares?
Awesome work by the programmer! Stretching the 2600 limits.
Excellent all round. In particular, the music and sfx are stunning...
This is what Pacman SHOULD have been for the Atari 2600!
Yeah, it's a shame.
But Atari was lazy and probably on crack that they released the concept prototype.
OMG!!!!!!!!!!
This is what it should've looked like!!! I want this game badly!!!
Absolutely mind blowing, even the designers behind the atari 2600 NEVER intended to allow 8K games because the internal rom inside is 4K ,BTW they even tout that no one would ever use bigger rom games then 4K since memory was soooo damm expensive in 1977,but thanks bankswitching,bigger rom games are possible,so if you tout to throw your atari 260 away with the reason that it could not do bigger & better games,well think again because this version proves that with such kind of graphics,sound and decent gameplay all become possible on this old machine,so you better off saving your atari 2600 from the trash,dust it off to play this ultimate version of,,,, pac man!!!!
The original console designers chose a standard off-the-shelf 24-pin cartridge slot to save money. This was a travesty. They didn't set aside enough pins to map all available memory. Fortunately, the MOS chip has a way to multiplex memory pages by using two multi-purpose pins. Without this, there would be no 8K or higher carts. This eats up some clock cycles and adds complexity, but is otherwise a clever way to map memory when pins are scarce.
With only 24 pins available, another useful function that was dropped was the hardware interrupt pin. This could have been used to get even more functionality. Remember, this was the same chip used in the Apple 2e. There was no reason they couldn't get at least the same amount of performance out of their games. They just went the cheap route and reduced functionality to same a few pennies here and there.
Where they screwed the pooch was with the archaic graphics (or lack of) processing. Basically, you had to code (using the measly 4K) a graphics driver in every game. A good 80% of your code is spent just drawing stuff on the screen.
All of engineering is a trade-off between functionality and money. The designers went for short-term profit instead of thinking ahead and making something that would knock our 1970's socks off. This was probably necessary because there was no guarantee video games would be popular and they had to make a business case to their backers. A shame really.
@@stabgod the 2600s hardware design makes more sense when you realize that it was only ever designed to be a souped up/cost reduced pong console, and all of the other things it managed to so were as a result of exploiting hardware bugs.
John Rickard - yes I agree that they went the cheap route, but wouldn’t say the way coders manipulated memory was a bug. It’s a built-in feature on the MOS chip to multiplex memory pages. Not a bug at all, it was one of those features you get that doesn’t seem to have much use, but happens to be quite powerful in the right circumstances. Again, had they chosen a cartridge slot with just one more pin, they wouldn’t have needed to use the paging feature. Two more would have unlocked all available 32kb memory. For that matter, another pin for interrupts would have been a huge addition. We’re talking just adding pins to the cartridge slot. The cpu already had the requisite capabilities, just not enough pins to access all features. So they chose to gimp the system in order to save a few pennies per unit.
Idk anyone throwing consoles away because of cartridge storage size
@@Z64sports 😭😭😭😭
The programmer even put in the little pink door on the ghost house just to flex
This version of Pac-Man looks absolutely amazing. It sure beats the original Atari 2600 version. But the original Atari 2600 Ms. Pac-Man was pretty darn good also and came out just one year later. Atari did finally figure out how to get the most out of the 2600, but it took a big mistake for them to figure it out.
This is utterly mind-blowing! If only the original version of Pac Man on the 2600 looked like this.
This could've and should've been the version released back then. It would've been considered great
No, it couldn't have been made back then. It wasn't even made within the following 25 years.
@@customsongmaker
What he meant is that they should've took time making the game and made it to somsthing like this.
Please have some reading comprehension.
@@dryzenhawk4251 they did take the time. It took 25 years.
Just proof of that the official Pac-Man port for the same console could have been a lot better.
It's always neat to see the potential of a system, but unfortunately it's not always able to be tapped into at the time due to time constraints and hardware.
Damn Atari, get owned for your laziness on that horrible Pac-Man port release you did ages ago.
Wow the sound was really impressive
So you're telling me the it could have look like this ??!
If only Atari had programmers as talented as the maker of this when pacman 2600 was created. I know pacman sold well but, as a former kid at the time, I can say it was quite the letdown vs. the arcade. This version rocks! I would have been super excited to have this at home back in the day.
rmu2867 Yeah, if this was the version originally released it would have been sold A LOT more.
+rmu2867 not really. the management is the culprit, not the programmer(s)
+rmu2867 Two things...
One: If you read the new Atari book (Business is Fun), you'll find that the programmer (Todd Frye), wanted to use a cart with more than 4K, but management nixed it.
Two:. It's easy with hindsight to say, 'Aw hell, they could have done this 30 years ago'. Yeah. Technically, they could have. But what you are looking now at is the combined knowledge of over 30 years of jumping through hoops to do ANYTHING on the 2600. Remember: This thing was designed to do Pong games, and not much more than that. If the owner of Atari had his way, the 2600 would have been phased out for a newer, better machine by 1980, because it was believed that the 2600 couldn't do much more than Tank and Breakout. Thanks to the genius of Jay Miner (the graphics designer), they got a hell of a lot more than that out of it! Even Jay was later quoted as being shocked by what the programmers were able to do with such limited hardware.
Today, you have combined experience (and code samples), demonstrating the tricks of thousands of programmers, using machines to code with that they could only DREAM of way back when.
You can try something, and if it doesn't work, it's a quick flip back from the monitor to try something else. You have tools to help you with the critical scanline timing, art tools to help you draw detailed characters, and bankselecting to let you use up to 16K.
Back then, you had none of this, AND they had to key everything in by hand (or have someone else do it) - then do it all again for the most minor of changes. The tools and knowledge base are light-years ahead of what they had in 1981, where only mainframes were a bit faster than the 2600 itself.
His Honer, Special Council Covfefe Chocker it’s very fashionable to “blame management” but there’s also the reality of a) the cost of cartridges then b) the retail limits around taking in inventory in time for Christmas and c) the reality of fads being notoriously short lived.
This version uses an 8k cartridge with bank-switched memory... compared to the 4k cartridge with just the Atari's 128 bytes of memory that the 1981 Atari Pac Man used. That was a corporate decision, if the programmer could have used the then-new 8k cartridge, the game would have looked a lot better.
It's a lot like the NES version, really nice homebrew, basically as spot on as the 2600 can get.
I always knew the 2600 had so much more potential. The problem with game developers back then , is that they had tight deadlines and had to rush games into production (just look at the original 2600 Pacman.....it was a joke)...but had to be out by Christmas 1981. Third party developers actually made some half decent games for 2600, as they had more time and thought to put into them. This video is a perfect example of what some of the games could have been back then .
Definitely shouldn't have cut corners with that game when they released it in 1982.
The Atari 2600 is a powerful machine, just needs some work to unlock it's true potential.
It is not powerful at all. It can only display 2 moving things at a time. In Pitfall, the trees in the background are made of the same sprite as the player's body, because the Atari was too weak to allow separate background images.
@@customsongmaker Still, for a console that was originally considered to be not much more than a home version of pong, it can do a lot more than that. I wasn't saying it was powerful in the sense it was like an NES or anything, I was simply saying that it's underestimated.
That old "Cruise Elroy."
So much better than the original 2600 PM
I WANT THIS!!! Can I buy a cart???
This is wonderful! Did they manage to fit in intermissions?
I remember how excited I was when I got the 2600 pac man. But was disappointed when I started playing it😢
The homebrew did what atari couldn't do in the 1982
I asked for Pac Man for the 2600 for my birthday. I didn't have the heart to tell my parents it sucked worse than anything I had ever seen.
you've seen worse since it was a toughening™
@werre2 well, the twin towers collapsing was pretty horrific
I love the Atari 2600 port of Pacman for what it is. But this is amazing. It is as accurate to the original arcade game as you can get on the Atari 2600.
If Pacman was this great in 1982 it would have kept the gaming industry from crashing.
This is amazing. If Atari had released this game instead, they wouldn't have had to fill a landfill with unsold Pac-Man carts. They should have sprung for the 8K memory.
This version of Pac Man is no longer on AtariAge's website...I would love to see what Champ Games could do with a Pac Man port. Their Galaga and Wizard of Wor ports are 2nd to none on the console.
Now THIS is the game I wanted back in 1982!
If this is what we saw when Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 first came out we would have been amazed instead of disappointed. This looks great! This would have sold brand new Atari 2600 consoles just so people could play it. Thanks for the video, good stuff! 👍 👍
The 2600 could do some amazing stuff if the executives weren’t so cheap and this’s would have blown the minds of 2600 users. Should of given the developers the 8K ROM as they wanted. Bit them in the ass forcing the 4K ROM. Probably going to repeat now with a number of the bad AAA games spewing out the diarrhea hole now. History repeats itself when forgotten.
holy crap this game measures up to the Atari 5200 version of Pac man! If Atari had released this in 1982 instead of normal Pac man the video game crash of 1983 might not have even happened.
Nice... Pac-Man is done justice on 2600. This one even has the intermissions.
pac-man atari 2600 but it has effort
Amazingly done, but at the higher levels, there’s a LOT of flickering, sometimes to the extent that Pac-Man or the monsters become invisible for a few seconds. And the fact that the box behavior is never replicated on non-arcade editions of the game, no matter which iteration it is, is definitely forgivable, considering how little you have to work with on an over-40-year-old console. Mind-blowing-and FUN! Peace.
guess almost no company wanted to spend on 8k of memory back then!
Incredible
This is impressive for an Atari 2600 cart. Too bad the version we got was a real rush job. I think they gave the team a few weeks to meet the Christmas rush.
quite amazing. It would be interesting to know how much time and resource went into making it, compared to the original effort by Atari
SO MUCH BETTER THEN THE ORIGINAL ONE
Imagine if this was the real version back in 1982. It would have flown off shelves.
Perfect example of what could've been. Had THIS version come out on the 2600 in 1981, I think the 2600 wouldn't have suffered from a ton of horrible rushed games.
This almost reminds me of the version Atari made for the 8 bit computers and 5200.
Had Atari put this version out maybe the crash wouldn't have happened and they would still be around today
SO SO MUCH BETTER!
This version of Pac-Man is more into doing lines than popping pills
This is what we could've gotten if the original 2600 port wasn't so rushed.
This is 100 times better than the original 2600 Pac-Man
Why didn't this get a cartridge release?
The did have a version of Pac Man back in the day for the 2600 but it was very much inferior to this new version. The main reasons it's so much better is because newer programming techniques are used, there is better understanding of the hardware of the 2600 now then they did back then.
Livinghighandwise and most of it, they can use more Ram which was terribly expensive back then in cartridges
There are people who will make you a cart if you send them the rom. And BTW, ver 5 is out.
Can you point those of us not in the know to this? I want!
timfischer the rom is on AtariAge, membership is free. Hozer Video Games will make you a cart ..... reasonable.
Thanks for the info, I appreciate it
This is what proper programming looks like and what IS actually possible on the 2600. Is this using the 2600’s sound generator or the chip in on the cart like Commando or Ballblazer?
Awesome
For an A2600 game, this is pretty close. Nice job! :)
Here's Tod Frye, the creator of the original Atari 2600 Pac-Man, being impressed with this homebrew version: ruclips.net/video/RqezF_Lv05Y/видео.html and here's a much younger Tod Frye (from 1997, on the 20th anniversary of the release of the 2600 in an excellent documentary series called "Stella at 20") explaining WHY his looks the way it does (and he admits that a lot of it was because of laziness): ruclips.net/video/UTDUB_GiTKA/видео.html
Atari 2600 Pac-Man if the game wasn’t so fucking rushed:
Now all you have to do is mod ET and hope that consumer confidence doesn’t tank for another decade
Ghost Monsters Can Run, But They Can't Hide From Pac-Man!
If you press the fire button pacman runs
Looks so much better than the actual version. But why can't the dot/pellets be more square?
Yes and why is there no lossless audio voice acting?
@@customsongmaker Eh?
@@inceptional - I'm asking why the game doesn't have real voice acting by major Hollywood actors, with uncompressed 7.1 surround audio
unbelievable!! nice work
We could've had THIS version if Atari locked tf in
Blinky shouldn't be going that fast when Pac-man isn't eating....
Actually, that's a rule in the arcade Pac-Man as well. It's known colloquially as "Cruise Elroy", where Blinky starts going noticeably faster once a certain (low) amount of dots are on-screen. If you look up "The Pac-Man Dossier", it has a great writeup on this and other mechanics.
Well shut my mouth! I did not know this!! Thanks for the lesson! Will you be making a cart for it? I know the 4k is out but I would SOOO rather have this as a cart!!!
I'm merely a Pac-Man enthusiast, I have no access to nor skills to make a cart of this on my own. I'd recommend searching for the ROM and using a Harmony cart, but other than that, I'm not sure.
Sorry I meant to ask Dintar... thanks boss!!
This is nice
Imagine ET 8k !!!!!
+Aloan Moreira
Sorry to let you down , but the original was already an 8 kilobyte rom.
I play this on my Anbernic RG350 and it's as good as this looks. Way to drop the ball Atari.
Was this even possible back then?
I'm sure that many coding techniques and hardware secrets were not known to the developers at the time, so this is mostly possible thanks to more powerful, modern compilers and extensive knowledge.
Yes, but it would have needed an 8k cart. The biggest reason why the original looked so bad is because it was on a 4k rom.
dlancer2k Yeah, but even then, there's an earlier 4K ROM homebrew that's basically this, but without the power pellet sound, the title, and pitched sound, as well as always flickering graphics (though nowhere near as bad as the original)
Yes, imagine what could have happened if they sprang for the extra 4k .. strangely enough i still smile when i hear the original 2600 version start up .. bee, beep boo, bonk ... gronk, gronk, gronk .. I mean, you to use a lot of imagination to interpret 2600 games anyway.
cool Atari game
This can't be the actual sound effect from an Atari 2600??? It sounds just like the arcade...
I'll take this any day over the garbage we got instead
Better than original Pac-2600
Awesome!!
I was around when the 2600 came out but I'm a noob when it comes to homebrew games etc. What is "8K" referring to?
A K is a kilobyte. A kilobyte is 1024 bytes. In other words, the entire game takes up roughly the same memory as a text file that contains 8,192 letters of text.
In other words, this program is EXTREMELY tiny, especially by today's standards.
Very nice indeed! ~ Is there a homebrew game cartridge of this game available?
atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1010
Did this 8K version get released? Or is it that ONLY the 4K version made it to market.
The 4K version is cool looking BUT frustrating BECAUSE it starts off TOO FAST...also the flickering of the ghosts makes them hard to see(playing game on the flashback portable). This version looks to have almost an EXACT feel of arcade Pac-Man at least at the beginning plus FAR LESS flickering of the ghosts.
Sounds like the origanal. Pac man
ET FTW!
why couldn't they have done this the first time?!?
So with this being 8k in size will it work on a 2600 through a flash cart?
Surely, common flashcards will usually run a ROM file that's up to 32kb.
Chris - Thanks Chris. I wasn’t sure if the 2600 would be able to handle a ROM larger than 4k but if the size issue was more a cart thing then great! How amazing would it have been to have this as the official release back in 1982!
If the Atari had even 4K of onboard RAM, more games would have been better. Instead of putting a RAM chip on each cart.
This in Atari Flashback portable
I still want the ROM or the cart!!! ;)
This is what we could've gotten if it weren't for the Atari 2600's terrible quality assurance.
No, it's about memory available to use.
@@Sprogster No, I'm pretty sure it's the lack of quality across the entire Atari 2600 library. There's too many games for me to name the redeeming factors of the American console market crash of 83.
👍🏻👍🏻
Were can I buy this?
This is what I wish we got instead of that pile of crap they put out...
Latest release: atariage.com/forums/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=598307
Where can i download it?
LOOOOOOOL
2600 got a terrible version of Pac-Man in the 80s... This version looks nearly perfect, though!
Looks great! Way better than that ABOMINATION!
BAP BAP BAP BAP!
So damned annoying...
Can I have the rom please?
I'm the same guy as Vitto's phone collection
Just to think that the original release for the 2600 could have looked like this if Atari would have taken the time and effort into putting out a better product. I hated the original 2600 version since I was a kid. I would have been so happy with one that looked like this back in the day.